From France west coast to Portugal via ship?
- By
- Aparna Patel
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- 2 Aug, 2023
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The ferry you chose before was a 21 hour ride. The trip you imagine would be twice that, nowhere within sight of land (except on the Spanish end), and through not particularly polite seas. Regardless, that ride does not exist.
I concur with not driving, having just done a driving trip twice that long myself, it would be a 2-day trip if you push, when you have the neeeds of family to balance against forward progress.
It’s an easy flight, of course.
For a ferry style experience, consider the train. Get from where you are to Hendaye, France via whichever French trains (regular or TGV) will get you there. Then, ride the fairly nice Sud Express to Lisbon.
Did you look at the Saint Nazaire to Gijon Ferry>? This would still leave a 7.5 hour drive down to Lisbon, though. Ah, it may be that this service is no longer available 🙁
Sorry, our Saint Nazaire – Gijon page is no longer available due to this service not running anymore. For an alternative, please visit the following pages
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It seems that there is no direct option
From this quite old (2012) discussion on Le Routard.com (the website of a popular French tourist guide), there is no direct ferry route between Bretagne and Portugal. Ferries goes to Spain, in Gijon or Bilbao for example. This website confirms it was still the case in 2015.
This makes sense, as Portuguese main cities, namely Lisbon and Porto, are on the Atlantic Coast and reaching them would make the trip longer.
I found such a trip with Brittany Ferries:
Brittany Ferries vous conduit jusqu’en Espagne, à Bilbao ou Santander. Depuis ces ports, vous pouvez facilement rejoindre le Portugal avec votre voiture. Comptez environ 6 heures de route pour aller de Bilbao à Porto par exemple.
My translation:
Brittany Ferries brings you to Spain, in Bilbao or Santander. From these ports, you can easily reach Portugal with your car. It takes about 6 hours of driving to go from Bilbao to Porto for example.
Also, their website mentions that it is possible to reach Spain through a short stop in UK:
Il existe d’autres possibilités via des lignes avec escale courte en Angleterre. C’est le cas de Roscoff – Santander via Plymouth, ou de Caen-Ouistreham / Le Havre / St Malo jusqu’à Santander ou Bilbao via Portsmouth. Il est également possible de faire une étape à Cork.
My translation:
There exists other possibilities through lines with a short stop in England. It is the case of Roscoff – Santander via Plymouth, or Caen-Ouistreham / Le Havre / St Malo to Santander or Bilbao via Portsmouth. It is also possible to make a stop in Cork.
This is what I could gather using French websites. Since there is an important Portuguese community in France, I am pretty confident that if there was another option, I would have found it.
It’s hard prove a negative, but: Nantes to Lisbon is a two hour flight, easyJet, Transavia and Air France all do it, can’t imagine there being a high demand for a ship this way. Even the Saint Nazaire-Gijon route was suspended five years ago and that’s much shorter. That year is no coincidence — the Perpignan–Barcelona high speed rail line opened in 2013 connecting the French TGV to the Spanish high speed network so those who do not want to fly could take the TGV. Thus, the 15 hour ferry from Saint Nazaire-Gijon was now only competitive for those travellers who went to Northern Spain, if they wanted to go further inland, the train was faster. Squeezed by flights and train, this ferry died. No wonder an even longer ferry is just not viable.
Getting back to Portugal, World travel guide says
There are no international ferries into Portugal. If travelling from the UK, you need to take the ferry to France or Spain and continue down to Portugal by car, coach or train.
Some sort of cruise is an option but https://www.oceaniacruises.com/baltic-cruises/amsterdam-to-lisbon-MNA190917/ I do not think the pace and price matches your needs.
Credit:stackoverflow.com‘
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